The news that revenue from recorded music worldwide in 2012 grew for the first time since 1999 is surely heartening for an industry struggling to get to grips with digital and overcome piracy – even if it's just by 0.2% to $16.48bn.

It is, however, worth noting that revenue levels are still down more than 40% from the halcyon days of the late 1990s when CDs reigned supreme and online filesharing was still over the horizon.

Looking deeper into the figures published by the international record label body IFPI reveals that things may not be as clear-cut as it first appears. Markets that have traditionally been performing the best are down while those that haven't are up. Revenue in Europe alone was down by 2.4% on the previous year (and down 42% on 1999).

Of the top four markets only Japan saw an increase (4%), while US revenue was down by 0.5%, the UK by as much as 6.1%, and Germany by 4.6%.

Despite the decline at home the UK continued to punch above its weight in the international charts, accounting for three of the four biggest-selling albums in the world – Adele (again) at number one, and One Direction at number three and four. Elsewhere in the top 20 were UK acts Mumford & Sons, Led Zeppelin, Ed Sheeran and Emeli Sandé.

Unsurprisingly, considering last summer's reports on Sweden's soaring digital market, the country has the second biggest increase with 18.7% to a total of $176.7m. Sweden was one of the countries most badly hit by piracy in the past decade, when revenues plunged.

The combination of going after pirates while developing legal alternatives such as Spotify – which is bundled in with some Swedish mobile phone tariffs and used by a third of the population – appears to have worked well to turn things around.

The importance of Spotify, and the less popular Wimp, streaming services is illustrated by the IFPI figures. Now 59% of Sweden's revenue comes from digital, of which only 9% comes from downloads – with a whopping 91% coming from subscription streams (the highest percentage of any country in the world).

As Swedish radio plays more local artists than most other European countries, eight of the country's 10 top-selling albums were by local acts. Only Finland had more local artists (nine) in the top 10. In the UK, seven of the 10 top-selling albums were British.

The country that saw the biggest increase in revenue was India, up by 21.6%, albeit from a low base bringing total income to $146.7m. In other words: though India has a population of 1.2 billion it pulls in $30m less than Sweden – a country with 9.5 million inhabitants.

The nascent music industry in India has traditionally functioned on a buy-out basis with copyright almost non-existent. But perhaps this increase is a sign of things to come, as a change in its copyright law is currently winding its way through the courts.

China, which saw the third largest increase in revenue by percentage (9%), still only brought in $92.4m in revenue from recorded music. As the country is slowly starting to respect copyright, it's still proving difficult to convince its 1.35 billion population to pay for music when it's been viewed as "free" for all for so long.

The other countries in the top 20 that saw revenue rises were Australia, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and Norway.

Given the international success of Gangnam Style singer PSY and growing international interest in K-Pop it is perhaps surprising that South Korea's revenue dropped by 4.3%. This may be because although PSY's Gangnam Style was the third biggest-selling single in the world (9.7m), he didn't really sell many albums on the back of it.

Both South Korea and Japan bucked the global trend, however, seeing an increase in physical sales in 2012. This can largely be attributed to K-Pop and J-Pop labels focusing on releasing albums in deluxe packaging in different versions of the same album. "CDs are becoming the new merchandise in Asia," said Sandy Monteiro, south-east Asia president for Universal Music.

Income from the performance rights market (radio, TV, nightclubs, bars, restaurant and shops) continued to advance, growing by 9.4% in 2012. This was most likely due to countries that previously did not have performance rights societies collecting income boosting their efforts.

This part of the market could grow significantly in the future if the US joins the vast majority of the countries on the list in paying performers for radio play.

Finally, there's one detail in the IFPI report that makes the so-called "turnaround" even less impressive: it includes synchronisation income in the total revenue. Revenue from synchronisation deals – for use in TV adverts, films, brand partnerships and games – grew by 2.1% year on year, to account for 2% of total music revenue.

However, it is worth noting that this income stream has only been included in IFPI figures since 2010, skewing like-for-like comparisons with years before then.

No wonder the IFPI report emphasises the importance of subscription streaming services – it hopes and wishes the rest of the world could follow Sweden's trajectory.